Bad as I Am
by Fool-Saint
Summary: I am drawn to this place. I hate it here, though I cannot keep from coming. Slash. Completed.


Bad as I Am.

By Allie

Rating: R

Cast: Sirius Black, Remus Lupin. Slash.

Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction written using the world, and characters, of J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter Series. This series does not belong to me and I claim no ownership of it. I am borrowing.

Summary and Notes: I am drawn to this place. I hate to return, but I cannot keep away. Written to suit Remus' perspective.

--- --- ---

The wind howls around me, crying out, wailing, gasping, and shrieking; the air itself seeming to exact revenge for every night I spent here, forcing it to watch me as I tormented the very atmosphere. Seven years of my life I gave this place, I could count the days of misery I caused it but don't dare to. Here I am, though, returned to this place and paying for it amid winds that moan and scream at me the way I did so many years ago in my days of madness; all the while they blanket me in a blue-grey sky and pelt at me rain and snow and hail, daring me to seek refuge inside.

Daring me to go to him.

My cloak billows out in the wind, barely offering me any protection form the elements, tattered as it is. I stare at the structure in front of me, I don't remember ever once coming through this door. It makes this place seem all the more alien to me now. I don't think it would help, though, had I come through the secret passageway. I have never been here when I was completely myself. I wish he hadn't designated this place to meet. I don't know why he did. it must hurt him to come back as much as it hurts me. Maybe more. He was always a little more sensitive, though you'd never get him to admit it.

A hailstone hits the side of my face. It hurts like hell but I welcome the pain. It keeps me from remembering. I want to hurt if it means my thoughts won't drift back to where they were going a second ago. A second hailstone smacks my face and I give in. To the storm, to the house, to the pain, but mostly I hive in to him.

I'm sure that I am walking up the stairs to the door, but even though there's only three or four of them, they never seem to end. I take another step and I'm no closer to door. One more and I seem further away.

As I attempt in vain to advance, my mind seems to drift back, though I do all I can to fight it, and I remember our sacred place, as we had acknowledged it all those years ago. Not even Prongs knew about this. Well, he knew about the house but not what it meant to us. It became perfect in its state of natural disarray, the slashed curtains, broken windows allowing a draught, dismembered furniture, dust piled up layer on layer. We did not dare to rebuild it, each imperfection marking a moment of our time, whether I was mad with rage or we both were mad with lust it didn't matter. This was our heaven, though the casual observer would call it Hell.

We'd joked once, before the house became sacred, about making this place our home. We were lying on a bed with a slashed mattress and a corner fallen because I'd broken one of the legs. We'd planned to marry, in Hogsmeade, or at the Hogwarts Chapel, as there was one at the time, fix up this place, dig a proper basement for me free of secret passages, and breed and raise puppies, for adoption as pets. It had never seemed right for the black dog and the werewolf to have children, and I don't think he trusted me with them. It was a really nice fantasy while we had it. We were never really serious anyway about anything but staying together. That can't happen now.

We lost any chance of it when England fell apart. We lost Prongs, Wormtail disappeared. I refuse to believe him to be dead and Padfoot got arrested. With all of us scattered to the winds, it hurt because the things he did, or was put in Azkaban for didn't make me love him less. I know it couldn't have hurt me so much as him, God knows compared to him I've been lucky but still, faced with that door, I'm having trouble bringing myself to step inside.

"Sanctem Sactorum." I murmur as I close my hand around the door handle. That's what we'd call it when we arrived together, to keep the unwanted from stepping in on our sacred place. I push the door open and cross the threshold. The interior is unchanged, or almost. There's more dust, but much of it is from all those years ago. I wasn't joking when I claimed this place was not to be disturbed. You would need a hammer and chisel to remove all the dust from those years.

I cross the foyer, and make for the stair, afraid to disturb anything. Afraid to touch anything, lest it bring another memory to life. I leave footprints in the dust as I make my way up another seemingly endless stairway and across a hall that reminds me of the way to Potions in my first week as a year one student, the same year I met him. The door at the end of the hall is closed, and so it should be. If there is one place in this house that suffered most in all the years that I passed here, it is that room. I used to think sometimes that opening the door would cause the room to fall apart. He would cast the Sanctem Sactorum spell again to "keep it standing" when that happened. It's silly, but its one of few memories of him that doesn't cause me pain.

I reach for the doorknob, but it pulls open in front of me, I can see him now. He looks so changed, like he's had years taken away from him. He has. The Dementors have stolen countless years of his life that can never be returned, but his eyes, hardened with pain, still shine of innocence and ever so faintly of whatever it was I fell for in the first place. We make no move; just stare each other, we were not expecting what we saw, either of us, and we both hurt for the other.

All we can do is stare, trying to concentrate the image of the other into simple oblivion, an oblivion from where we can conjure forth what we had been expecting, what we wanted—needed to see. Sirius does not disappear though, though for a second I was sure I saw him flicker. He is still in face of me, though; my Sirius, the one so full of life and so unwilling to destroy it, remains in whatever void I tried to call him from.

I still do not know what I am doing here, why I did not just tear his note apart and send the pieces back with his owl. Everything is wrong now; this place should be dead to me and him along with it, but as I stare and he stares back at me, I find that I cannot leave. I do not know why on Earth I am here at all, and neither do I care. I am drawn to this place just the same as I had always been. Just the same as I am drawn to him.

--- --- ---

This time I know

You're not the answer to my prayers

And I have grown

With each disappointment

Through the years

And as bad as I am

As bad as I am

I'm still here

"_Bad as I Am"_ By Great Big Sea

Used without permission


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